>As a temporary participant in what I hope comes to reality: a discussion of the>environmental issues brought up by Dick Wright, I have been wading through the >"dating Adam" posts. After the most recent spate, I felt compelled to make an >observation: There seems to be an amazing amount of hubris in this discussion.>First, I think it is astounding that anyone would suggest that the Holy Spirit>has made this startling interpretation (of who Adam and Eve really were) >apparent to only a few folks through the millenia. So all those great saints>throughout church history were really mistaken! Wow, that's a pretty bold>assertion.

How long ago was it that Galileo faced these same assertions? Have we really
learned nothing in, what, 450 years? Okay, here are a couple of data points.
Let's call them "givens."

1. Man has genetic markers that tie him into the animal kingdom. We
are
higher primates because we are genetically linked to other higher
primates.

2. The Bible speaks of Adam as a created being, out of the dust and
without
ancestors.

Now, wise guy, spend a day or two at the library, and give us your solution
without
touching the parameters.

>Second, I thought evangelicals were marked by granting authority to>the Word over our faulty understanding of the World. If the Bible is so >esoteric that only a few "gifted" individuals can ferret out this totally >unapparent understanding, I might just as well give up on reading it.

No, just glance at a biology book occasionally.

>How anyone can explain away Eve being "the mother of all the living" as saying >that all of Eve's relatives emanate from her really blows me away. The progeny>(relatives) obviously emanate from _any_ progenitor. It would be absurd for>the Scripture writer to state such an obvious fact.

There were two possible explanations offered for that verse. Pick either one.

>I trust this does not come across as harsh. But this has all been pretty >astounding to me -- given the evangelical basis of ASA.

Not harsh - uninformed. Why do you think the ASA has spent 52 years looking
hard
at the very things you find so intuitively obvious? Glenn may be wrong, I
may be
wrong, and so may all the rest of the contributors on this forum. But if we
don't examine the data with a view toward resolving not promulgating the
problems
associated with an inspired text on one hand and God's nature on the other, we
are going to continue to lose the bright and intelligent kids who aren't
going to swallow your tired, dogmatic claims of perfect knowledge.